Agri-Stack Scheme Latest News
The Uttar Pradesh govt recently issued a stern warning to district magistrates, emphasizing that strict action will be taken against those who fail to complete farmer registration under the Agri-stack scheme within the specified timeframe.
About Agri-Stack Scheme
- It is the digital foundation being set up by the government to enable the rollout of data-centric digital services to improve Indian agriculture and enable farmer empowerment.
- It integrates farmer data, land records, and scheme benefits into a centralized digital platform.
- It is being implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmer Welfare at the Centre in close collaboration with the Revenue and Agriculture departments of State governments.
- It is an infrastructure and foundational layer that enables various government and private entities to provide farmers with tailored services by providing them access to high-quality, validated, attested, and current data. Thus, Agri Stack will:
- Provide the right support to farmers in terms of finance and agricultural inputs at the right time.
- Provide localized and tailored early warning systems for disasters, including pest attacks, droughts, floods, etc.
- Simplify government scheme benefits lifecycle for farmers.
- Enable quick and easy access to affordable finance.
- Enable private participation in farmer service delivery, thereby increasing farmers' choices.
- Enable ease of governance by providing required data at the right place for enhanced decision-making, policy implementation, and feedback management.
- Improve targeting of government benefits (by maximizing inclusion and minimizing exclusion and fraud).
Building Blocks of Agri Stack
- Farmer and Farmland Registries:
- At the center of Agri Stack is a Farmer Registry, a federated registry of all the farmers in the country, compiled by States according to common standards, and cached by the Centre.
- Each farmer will be assigned a unique FarmerID (a functional ID, based on Aadhaar as per IndEA 2.0) and a digitally verifiable credential.
- The Farmer Registry will be dynamically linked to their farmland plot records for non-legal, planning and advisory, and scheme-delivery purposes only.
- Unified Farmer Service Interface (UFSI):
- It is the building block that enables interoperability across stakeholders in Agri Stack.
- UFSI is envisioned to be used by government and authorized private users, such as Banks, Agri-Techs, agriculture value-chain companies, etc.
- UFSI will enable a center-state federation of data, authorized and consent-brokered access to the core registries' data, and standards-based interactions between various public and private stakeholders.
- Crop sown Registry:
- It is designed to be a federated registry of crops being sown and grown across the country every season, on every farm, by each farmer.
- It aims to streamline and improve previously prevalent paper-based methods of surveying crops by introducing smartphone- and image-based (including drone and satellite images in the future), more fool-proof methods of crop survey.
- Agri Stack Sandbox:
- It is a subset of the Agri Stack that will provide a simulated environment with access to the UFSI along with sample data for the various registries and databases to authorized stakeholders.
- Purpose: To allow them to test and safely fail, or succeed and get fully authorized access to the production environments.Â
- Consent Manager:
- The Consent Manager facilitates data-blind sharing of personal data only with persons/entities for whom the data principal (i.e., a farmer) has provided consent.
- Consent once given may also be revoked, preventing future sharing of data.
Source: TOI
Agri-Stack Scheme FAQs
Q1: What is the main purpose of the Agri-Stack Scheme?
Ans: To enable data-centric digital services for farmer empowerment and improved agriculture.
Q2: Which ministry is responsible for implementing the Agri-Stack Scheme?
Ans: Ministry of Agriculture and Farmer Welfare
Q3: Which data sources does Agri-Stack integrate to provide services to farmers?
Ans: Agri-Stack integrates farmer data, farmland records, and government scheme benefits into a centralized digital platform.